Golden Boy sure has an odd promotional strategy when it comes to Jaime Munguia.
Take a brave kid with a fan-friendly, all-action style who’d fight a threshing machine if need be and make him look like a cowardly, cherry-picking perpetual ducker.
That’s what Oscar De La Hoya’s company has done with the 25-year-old battler from Tijuana over the last couple of years. And, honestly, it doesn’t look like they’re deviating from their run-the-kid-through-the-muck strategy anytime soon.
Golden Boy and Team Munguia have already backed away from two world title shots (against Demetrius Andrade and Jermall Charlo), an interim title shot (against Janibek Alimkhanuly) and an eliminator (against Carlos Adame). It’s getting to the point where one has to wonder what fight, exactly, are these guys waiting on. Big-money fights with Gennadiy Golovkin and Saul Alvarez AREN’T just around the corner as both have their plans pretty much etched in stone for the next year or so. There’s really nothing else (and nobody else) there, other than what’s already been rejected for him.
All of this makes the legitimately likable kid look bad.
To be fair to Golden Boy, any promoter taking the reins on Munguia’s career at the point they did was going to be burdened with a tough task.
The kid burst on to the world scene back in 2018, when he blew away Sadam Ali in four rounds to take the WBO junior middleweight title. Ali was just five months past an upset of Miguel Cotto and was favored to beat Munguia handily– mostly because Munguia’s only claim to fame up until that point was as a rejected opponent for Gennadiy Golovkin, deemed too green and unaccomplished by the Nevada State Athletic Commission for such a dangerous step up in class.
As things would turn out, though, Munguia, who was a late replacement opponent and probably came into the fight as a small light heavyweight, was simply too big and strong for an Ali who was really just a welterweight with a couple pounds tacked on.
The four-knockdown blowout on the HBO Boxing main stage turned heads and fans/media who expected nothing from Munguia previously were now singing his praises as an emerging new star.
Expectations were created, but after some rough patches against Liam Smith in his next fight, it became clear that Munguia’s rise to stardom would have to be tempered with some smart matchmaking and a load of patience. For all his willingness and physicality, he was still green and lacking in certain key developmental areas. With Golden Boy becoming his co-promoter in late 2018, the competitive push forward was pulled back and opposition got increasingly tailor made, matched to Munguia’s strengths.
Rather than develop, however, Munguia’s skill set got stagnant. He actually began to slip in some areas. After three years of being spoon fed on the boxing main stage as a DAZN contract player and moving up to the easier-to-make middleweight division, he was actually regressing as a fighter. And, despite some signs of improvement in a win over Gabriel Rosado last November, he doesn’t appear to be substantially any better now than he was back when he first beat Sadam Ali.
That’s a real problem for a not-yet-ready kid whose connections have brought him no. 1 contender status in both the WBC and WBO, as well as a no. 2 ranking in the WBA. Team Munguia has no choice but to pass on many of the opportunities coming his way.
This reluctance to put him into deep waters speaks volumes about Golden Boy’s confidence in his elite-level viability right now. There’s no shame in a young fighter not being ready for next-level challenges. The problem is that Munguia’s been pushed to high heaven and hyped to be the fighter his people clearly feel he is NOT– and it’s making him look really bad.
After each fight, Munguia insists that he wants to fight “the best” and there’s no reason to question his honesty about this.
But when he calls out the best and his team rejects the best as they come to him, well, that’s starting to make him a bit of a laughingstock.